The Bioinformatics Core will develop mechanisms of communication for participants and the general public. The Bioinformatics Core will develop, install, and support a unicast and multicast teleconferencing system using the capabilities of the Internet as a transport medium. The multimedia hardware and software capabilities will be provided for all NM-INBRE-associated institutions. NM-INBRE seminars, workshops, and lectures will be presented using this capability so that participants throughout the consortium can benefit; other seminars, workshops, lectures, etc. in the biomedical fields hosted by NM-INBRE institutions will use this multimedia conferencing capability to enhance statewide participation. Technical interchanges between INBRE collaborators will be supported using the unicast capabilities of this system. The Bioinformatics Core will develop, organize, and present seminars, workshops, and credit-based courses in biomedical topics and methods for data acquisition, modeling, representation, and analysis. Seminar speakers from extant bioinformatics training programs will be invited, as will regional and national experts. The Bioinformatics Core will continue the development of a multiplatform scientific computing environment to support the analytical needs of participating NM-INBRE investigators. This environment provides researchers with an integrated collection of bioinformatics tools, databases, and filesystems that can be deployed throughout the state. Investigators will access the system through network connections to the central Bioinformatics Core Computational Facility or local servers. This system facilitates managing diverse scientific software. The Bioinformatics Core will develop databases and tools to represent, interpret, and evaluate testable hypotheses in the scientific thematic areas. This research will be conducted through collaborations of both the Bioinformatics Core faculty and the National Center for GenomeResources.